Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Now I have a seventh grader (and he happens to have the same bus stop and middle school as seventh grade me).

Summer treated me kind of...oddly.

We had so much fun having goofy, impromptu little adventures; but, there was also a slightly darker side that I'm still coming to grips with.

Most of that darkness stems from a pretty nasty cycle of depression followed by an almost unbearably happy...high, for lack of a better word.

And during that very high high, I crashed my bike on a rather peppy, way too aggressive/confident jaunt on the trails with my husband following close behind.

It wasn't a violent, bloody, helmet-cracking spectacle of a crash (I've had those, too)...more like a solid, defiant thud. I wish I could say I was ripping down some gnarly descent littered with loose rocks and criss-cross slick roots in every direction.

Nope. Quite the opposire.

So opposite, in fact, I'll spare you the boring details.

I hopped right back on my bike without assessing any damage (there was none, except of course my ego).

It wasn't until much later that day when I couldn't recall certain words, couldn't quite focus, coupled with a pounding unrelenting throb in my head that I thought, "Huh. Maybe I should get checked out?"

Then boom ER boom Neurological exam boom CT scan BOOM concussion boom...go home and rest. Then rest some more. And rest even more than that when you're done resting.

And we all know how much I LOVE to be idle & sedentary for days on end.

And I love it even more when I'm unable (not allowed) to watch TV, use my phone to look at garbage and/or cute pictures of puppies (thanks, Maggie) or text my friends all the shit that pops into my head randomly throughout the day...no reading, no focusing in general.

It's harder than it sounds.

In the midst of all this, I was dealing with some changes to my *meds*/crazy pills...whatever you want to call them.

So, I took all the ass-kicking in stride with just a teeny tiny pity party for myself...now I'm clawing my way back to some semblance of normal.

Normal for me requires a healthy dose of sweating outside while traveling briskly over dirt or pavement (or both) on my own two feet or on two wheels.

I think I will have run a mere 30ish miles for the entire month of August.

So that's a bummer.

But.

It's really nothing & such a minor insignificant *blip*

when I get out of my own head and consider all the really hard shit that people are dealing with right now in Texas or Charlottesville or right on my nephew's own street in Coatesville. Just to rattle off a few.

Come on.

So that's where my bitching stops.

I always come back & sometimes, even stronger.

(Hopefully, that's the theme going forward...not just for me, but for this utter shitshow that has choked our beloved nation...and the world, at large; side-eyeing us & just waiting for yet another outrageous misstep or injustice).